The present invention relates to production of useful monoamine and diamine monomers from poly(ethyleneterephthalate). More particularly, it relates to the conversion of poly(ethyleneterephthalate) scrap to ethylene glycol and to useful amine functional monomers such as paraxylylenediamine, 1,4-bis (aminomethyl) cyclohexane isomers and 4-aminomethylbenzoic acid.
Poly(ethyleneterephthalate) (PET) is a thermoplastic polyester which finds commercial utility in the production of disposable consumer items such as soft drink bottles, packaging films, and fibers for fabrics and the like. These PET consumer items are eventually discarded thereby either contributing to environmental pollution as trash or finding marginal utility as PET scrap for recycle as low grade PET. Attempts at reducing the amount of PET trash have included the aforementioned recycling of PET to low grade PET. Prior recycling of PET, however, has had a number of problems associated with it including that scrap PET items are often partially degraded and have colorants therein which means that recycled PET is not colorless and thus cannot be used for many commercial applications, for example as PET stock for soft drink bottles.
Therefore, it is a principal objective of the present invention to provide a process for the conversion of scrap poly(ethyleneterephthalate) to valuable, substantially pure chemical products in high yields.
It is also an objective to provide a process for converting scrap PET to monomers useful for the production of various polyamides.